Dreams May Die
by chocolatequeen
Summary: Sydney angst over her missing two years
1. Default Chapter

Disclaimer: Of course, I don't own any of this blah blah blah. A/N: This story is purely Sydney angst. If you're hoping for fluff, you've come to the wrong place. A/N 2: This whole story is based on the song "I Dreamed a Dream" out of Les Miserables. If you've never heard it, you should try to find it somewhere, it's beautiful.  
  
Chapter 1: There Was a Time  
  
"There was a time when men were kind  
  
When their voices were soft, and their words inviting  
  
There was a time when love was blind  
  
And the world was a song, and the song was exciting  
  
There was a time.  
  
Then it all went wrong."  
  
I still can't believe it. Two years of my life have gone by, and I have no memory of what happened. My 30th birthday is next week, and if ever there was a woman with a reason to lie about her age, it's me. If I can't remember the birthdays they never happened right? So really I'll only be turning 28.  
  
I suppose that is the crux of the problem. Despite what I've been told, what I see when I look at the date on the calendar, my mind is stuck two years in the past. To me, the past is the present and the present is the future. When you get your yesterdays and todays turned around it's awfully hard to believe that there will be a tomorrow though, or that tomorrow will be any better than today which is really tomorrow and. I've got to stop thinking like this or I'll go mad.  
  
I want so badly to have someone to blame. I tried to point the finger at Arvin Sloane, but the more intel we receive the more unlikely that is. No, the people who stole my life from me belong to some faceless organization I'd never heard of before, which means that I don't know who they are now. I desperately need a tangible focal point for my anger, and fate offered me a perfect choice.  
  
Vaughn. When I saw him in the hallway and heard the honest concern in his voice, all my anger just came bubbling out. Every ounce of frustration I feel, all the loss and pain-I laid it all on his head. Now that I can think rationally and that I've heard his side of the story, I know it's not his fault. It is simply a cruel blow that life dealt me, and I have to learn to deal with it.  
  
I don't regret what I said though; I needed to let some of that anger go. And Vaughn. he just stood there and took it. He let me rip into him with a viciousness I wouldn't have thought myself capable of while he barely offered a defense. He knew I needed that.  
  
You know what the sad thing is? That just makes me love him more.  
  
Chapter 2: High Hopes  
  
"I dreamed a dream in times gone by  
  
When hope was high  
  
And life worth living  
  
I dreamed that love would never die  
  
I dreamed that God would be forgiving  
  
Then I was young and unafraid  
  
And dreams were made and used and wasted  
  
There was no ransom to be paid  
  
No song unsung  
  
No wine untasted."  
  
I used to be such a happy child. Okay, I'll put aside the mournful parent act. I loved life. I had a gorgeous fiancé whom I adored, I was following in my mother's career footsteps, and I was making a difference in the world.  
  
Then in the space of two-excuse me, four-years, the bottom has dropped out of my world three times. Or maybe it was four, after a while you stop caring enough to keep track. First I came home from a mission and found my fiancé, dead in my bathtub. It was months before I could take a bath without seeing his body in my mind.  
  
Before I'd truly begun to process his death, I discovered that I didn't really work for the CIA. I'd been making a difference in the world all right-the wrong kind of difference. How many times had I undermined the security of the United States while thinking I was upholding it? Plagued by guilt and hungry for revenge, I became a double agent.  
  
Then my mother. remember her, the one who I was modeling my future teaching career off of? Well it turns out she wasn't really a teacher, she was a spy. With the KGB. I suppose in some sick, twisted sense I actually did follow in her footsteps by working for SD-6. We both worked against the United States government.  
  
You know how they say bad things happen in threes? They're wrong. At least I hope they are, or I've got another two things coming, and I don't think I could handle that.  
  
So now I'm sitting here, trying to avoid thinking about the void that is two years of my life, and I find it hard to believe that I was ever happy. That girl I was before, did she really exist? How could I have ever had such an idealistic outlook on life? Where once I saw flowers and heard music, now I see only pain and the song has turned to tears.  
  
There is no more room in my heart for dreams. 


	2. Chapters 3 & 4

[b]Chapter 3: The Art of Forgetting[/b]  
  
"But the tigers come at night  
  
With their voices soft as thunder  
  
As they tear your hope apart  
  
And they turn your dream to shame."  
  
In two nights I lost everything. On the first night, I was forced to kill someone who was the mirror image of my best friend. Then, as I lay there unconscious, I was stolen from my home.  
  
When I woke up, I knew certain things would never be the same. I had memories of Allison Doren, I could picture Will in my bathtub in the same posture as Danny. I didn't know that this second night was separated from the first by two years, and that during those two years everything else had been taken from me. I went to sleep hoping to rebuild my life with Vaughn and woke up to discover he'd gone on with someone else.  
  
I need to know what happened to me in those missing two years. I can imagine some things, and none of them are pleasant. I know that somehow I was taken from my home and that I was apparently tortured and brainwashed. I've seen footage of myself killing a man in cold blood. From what little I've heard about The Covenant I can fill in a few blanks about their motivation, but none of it answers my biggest question: Why me?  
  
What was it about my life that led them to rip me away from it? Did I kill someone's brother like Sark did? Did they simply need another operative and I was the closest one available? Did my abilities draw a job offer similar to the one Sark made when we were in Russia, only this one (to quote the Mafia) was "an offer I couldn't refuse?"  
  
I'm not wholly unfamiliar with the recruiting tactics of terrorist organizations. After all, I went through the SD-6 recruitment process myself. However, never once in all that time did they brainwash me and steal away actual memories of my life. I wouldn't put such methods past Arvin Sloane, but apparently they were never necessary.  
  
Tell me, how do you forget? I think I could deal with the pain of my life now if I had no memory of what I have lost. Instead, I find myself remembering everything I'm longing to forget and unable to recall the things I so desperately want to remember.  
  
The one thing that is driving me more than this desire to regain my life is the defense mechanism that demands I forget what I had before. If I didn't remember my life, it wouldn't hurt every time I see something different. New apartment, new boss, dead best friend, Will in witness protection... nothing is the same.  
  
If I couldn't remember Vaughn, I wouldn't feel a pang in my heart every time I see him with Lauren. his wife. I wouldn't know that I should have been Mrs. Vaughn. Every loving glance between them wouldn't remind me of what we had, what we would still have if I hadn't been ripped from his arms in the cruelest of ways.  
  
The pain is almost enough to make me beg The Covenant to come back with their brainwashing techniques and erase my entire identity. Please, help me forget.  
  
[b]Chapter 4: Innocence Gone[/b][i]  
  
"He slept a summer by my side  
  
He filled my days with endless wonder  
  
He took my childhood in his stride  
  
But he was gone when autumn came."[/i]  
  
I have never been happier than I was during the months I was with Vaughn. From our ill-fated first date in Nice to our conversation in the flirting corner to that amazing kiss in the ruins of SD-6, I knew my life was finally going in the right direction. This was what I had wanted so long, this was the way life was supposed to be.  
  
And I wasn't the only one who was happy. We were happy together. We were happy to be together. Vaughn. Vaughn was the most amazingly loving man I have ever known. In all the time I'd known him, he'd always made it his goal to take care of me, but after we were able to act on our feelings, he threw his entire being into this mission. For the first time in my life, I felt. cherished.  
  
As the months went by, that feeling only intensified. I suppose that should have been my first warning that something would happen to mess it all up. After all, as the saying goes, "The higher you fly, the harder you fall." We were flying so high, wrapped up in our love for each other, that we were bound to fall. It was unavoidable.  
  
But who could have guessed that this would happen? Despite what I told Vaughn, even in our twisted world this is unreal. People do not simply disappear, leaving identifiable remains, and then magically return two years later. And yet it happened, and I have to live with it.  
  
My innocence has been stolen from me before, and each time Vaughn has been there to help me put back the pieces. When I learned what SD-6 really is, it was Vaughn who helped give me the strength to fight it. When I learned what my mother really is, Vaughn was the one who insisted that does not change who I am. But now, when the innocence of love has been torn from me, Vaughn isn't there. Vaughn will never be there just for me like he was before.  
  
In the innocence of my youth I imagined I was saving the world; in the innocence given by revelation I saw myself atoning for my sins; in the innocence gained from wisdom I realized I could not be accountable for the actions of another. But now, in the cynicism produced by too much pain, I realize I am truly alone. 


	3. Conclusion

Chapter Five: No Greater Fool  
  
"And still I dream he'll come to me  
  
That we'll live the years together  
  
But there are dreams that cannot be  
  
And there are storms we cannot weather."  
  
Of all the things I'm dealing with, one is harder than all the rest. Despite the fact that I know Vaughn is married and that he has said he does not regret his moving on, I still see him in my future. And when I say "my future" I'm not talking about the way I see Weiss or Dixon or Marshall, I'm speaking of a strictly white picket fence, 2.7 kids, and a dog kind of future.  
  
I know, I know. How big of a fool can I be? Well, it's been said that there is no greater fool than a fool in love, and that is what I am. Nothing that has happened in the past two years can erase the fact that I love Vaughn. I disappeared, I apparently worked for a terrorist organization, Vaughn got married, but I still love him.  
  
The Greek philosopher Hesiod said that "the fool learns by suffering." Now I'm inclined to believe that we all learn through our suffering, but perhaps that is the only way a fool can learn. I want to learn, I truly do. I despise feeling the hope beat in my heart when my head knows it is in vain. And so I purposely cause myself pain, in attempt to exorcise the dream.  
  
How do I do this? I spend time with Lauren. I watch her with Vaughn. I force myself to understand that what they have is real. I watch him casually brush his arm against hers in that mindless way that only two people who are completely familiar with each other can do. I see the smile she saves only for him and the answering flash of love in his eyes. It's all there, in glorious Technicolor, and I'm gradually coming to accept what it means.  
  
With a wisdom I didn't know I had, I understand that it's the little things that say the most. He might not write flowery poetry dedicated to the twin orbs of her eyes, but he silently, subconsciously offers her a sip of her coffee. He does this because it's their pattern. She likes coffee but doesn't get her own cup because she likes to steal some from him. Knowing this, he gets a larger cup than he could drink on his own so that there's enough for her to share. It's sweet, it's intimate. it's love.  
  
The screaming of my heart against this knowledge is fading to a dull roar, so I suppose I am gradually accepting the truth. No matter what dreams may linger in my heart, my time with Vaughn is over.  
  
"The dupe of friendship and the fool of love; have I not reason to hate and despise myself?" William Hazlitt  
  
Chapter 6: All Good Things.  
  
I find it amazing that given my past, I still expected life to be fair. Perhaps it's not so much that I thought it was fair as that I felt it was time for my luck to turn. After all, fortune may be fickle, but it has to smile on me eventually, right?  
  
Wrong. No matter how you phrase it-bad karma, being born under an unlucky star, punishment for all the mirrors I've broken-it's clear that happiness will never come my way.  
  
I've had dreams stolen from me before, but I was always left with the strength to dream again. Now I find that even that is gone. In place of the righteous anger that once railed against lost joy there is only an empty heart.  
  
Listlessly and with uncharacteristic fatalism, I accept my destiny. Love and happiness were never meant to be mine. I've tempted fate twice and twice been put in my place. This time, I know better. This time I've decided that dreams may die.  
  
"I had a dream my life would be  
  
So much different from this hell I'm living  
  
So different now from what it seemed; Now life has killed  
  
The dream I dreamed."  
  
A/N: That's it. Ok, hold on to your rotten fruit. I said at the beginning that this was an angsty piece, I've said no happy ending. There is a sequel to this piece already written called "Only In My Dreams." It's from Vaughn's POV and is equally angsty. Then, due to popular demand and peer pressure, I'm planning to write a conclusion with a happy ending. ~sigh~ The things people demand! :P 


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